Magic Casement (9 page)

Maiden,
maiden...

“SNOWBALL!”

...
maiden...

The
rocks floated past on the silvery water, and the swell was beginning to trouble
the horses, coming well up their legs now, over the wagon axles. They were
finding the wagon hard to pull. They were towing it.

The
water was deeper. The waves no longer showed the edge very clearly.

“Turn,
Rap!” Lin sobbed. “We’re at the bend, Rap! We must be! We’ll
go off!” He rose to his feet, awkwardly holding the seatback with his one
good arm. They were going to get wet boots in a minute. “Rap! Turn!”

Rap
was not sure. Distances were deceptive when they were all covered with water
and there were no landmarks at hand. He was thinking of the road itself,
beneath the water, two stone walls filled in level with shingle and rocks,
greeny blue, probably, with the strands of weed waving in the current. There
would be shadows of ripples moving over, like cloud shadows moved over the
summer hills. Fish? He had not expected so many fish, little ones...

Too
far to the right!

He
eased the lead pair to the left and they carried on. But if the wagon began to
float, then it would surely drag the horses off the road.

The
second bend, a big, wide curve... the wagon seemed to lift, skew left, then
settle, then lift. He blinked sweat from his eyes, squinting against the sun’s
glare, visualizing that underwater causeway, easing the horses around the bend.

Staying
away from the edges.

Then
Tallow Rocks were straight ahead and the current was behind them and the road
was starting to rise. He flicked the reins for more speed and licked salty
lips. He’d done it!

His
hands were shaking slightly and his neck felt sore. He arched his back to ease
it and then sat down.

“Sorry,
Lin,” he remarked, “what were you saying?”

Lin’s
eyes were big as oysters. “How did you do that?”

Come
to think of it, how had he done that? Rap began to feel very shaky. It was
almost as if he’d been able to see the road under the water. He’d
known where it was, what it looked like, almost. He had not seen it, but he’d
felt as if he knew what it would look like if he could... or as if he could
remember having seen it like that. Which he never had; no man ever had.

Just
as, earlier, he’d known there was another wagon around the seventh bend?

He
did not say anything, just shrugged.

“Another
thing we youngsters have to learn, I suppose?”

Rap
grinned at him. “Practice by yourself, though.”

Lin
used some very special obscenities. Where had he learned those?

“Lin?”
Rap said. “Lin, please don’t go and make a big story out of this?”

Lin
just stared at him.

“Lin!
You’ll get me in trouble.”

“I
suppose you weren’t getting me in trouble?” Lin yelled. He must
have been more scared than Rap had realized.

“It
was nothing much, Lin. I was standing up. I could see where the water was
flowing over the edges.”

“Oh...
sure!”

But
Lin reluctantly promised not to make a big story out of it. They left the water
and followed the lumpy track across Tallow Rocks, wheels spraying silver drops
in the air. The last dip was deep, but very short. The wagon might float there,
but it would not matter for there was no current and the road was not raised
above the shingle. He had done it!

The
king had ordered him off Krasnegar before the tide. Gods save the king.

“You
shave now?” Lin asked suddenly.

“Of
course.” Rap had shaved the previous night for the fourth time and included
his chin for the first time. He would have to get a razor of his own soon. Lin
had a faint dark haze on his upper lip. And he still had a very odd look in his
eye. “Why?” Lin shrugged and turned away, but after a moment, he
said,

“Funny
thing, growing up. Isn’t it?”

Yes
it was, Rap agreed, and concentrated on the next water barrier. But once they
were safely through that, he relaxed and began to enjoy himself, enjoy the
feeling that now he was one of the drivers-if the old man would ever trust him again
after that mad stunt he had just pulled.

“Yes,”
he said. “One moment you’re feeling all manly and the next you find
you’re behaving like a kid again. It’s like being two people.”
A fellow’s body started making all these odd changes without as much as
asking permission... what right did his face have to start growing hair without
asking him?

Like
being two people... and you knew only one of those people. Growing up was
becoming a stranger to yourself again, just when you thought you’d got to
know yourself. And part of growing up was wondering what sort of person you
were going to be. How tall? How broad? Trustworthy? A strong man or a weakling?
And what were you going to do with that man? Master-of-horse? Man-at-arms?

“Girls!”
Lin muttered to himself.

Girls.

Inos.

Now
they were rolling along the edge of the shingle, passing the lonely cluster of
shore cottages with their racks of fish and nets and a ramshackle corral and a
couple of haystacks starting to sprout. There were stacks of driftwood that the
old women gathered and heaps of peat moss. Bonfires of kelp were sending up
blue smoke. There were girls there and they waved. The men waved back. The long
bent grass waved, also.

“We
could eat here,” Lin said thoughtfully.

“Later.
“

Beyond
the shiny blue harbor lay Krasnegar, a towering triangle with a castle as a
topknot. Yes, it did look like a piece of cheese. Perhaps Rap was hungry after
all, but he’d said later, so later it would have to be. A yellow
triangle. Where had the sorcerer found black stone for his castle?

Inos
was in that castle.

He
thought of horse rides and clam digging and surf fishing; of Inos running over
the dunes, long legs, gold hair streaming in the wind, and her shrieks and
giggles when he caught her; of Inos scrambling up the cliffs in the sunshine,
daring him to come after her; of hawking and archery. He thought of her face,
not bony like a jotunn’s or round like an imp’s. Just right. He
thought of singsongs and winter firesides with singing and joking and his arm
around her as they sought pictures in the embers.

It
hurt, but it was for the best. There could never be anything between a princess
and a stableboy, nor even a wagon driver. He supposed that it had crept up on
them. He really had not noticed it until the previous day. They had been a
bunch of kids together, a dozen or more of them. It had only been near the end
of the last winter that he and Inos had started to drift together, and together
start drifting to the edge of the bunch. And then he had gone off to the
mainland when spring came.

She
had kissed him good-bye, but even then he had not thought very much about
it-not until they were apart. Then he had realized how he missed her smile and
the comfortableness of having her near-and realized that she didn’t kiss
other men good-bye. And lately he had started to dream about her. But she would
go off to Kinvale and find some handsome noble to come back and be king after
Holindarn died.

And
he would have to find some other girl to kiss.

Trouble
was, there weren’t other girls like Inos.

“Can
you remember much of your mother, Rap?”

Rap
looked in surprise at Lin, who was still a little paler than usual. “Why?”

“Some
of the women say she was a seer.”

Rap
frowned, trying to remember if his mother had ever admitted anything like that
or done anything like that.

“So?”
he said.

“Growing
up,” Lin said. “I just wondered... You’ve been doing some
strange things today, Rap. You’ve never been able to do things like that
before, have you?”

“Like
what? I didn’t do anything!”

Lin
was unconvinced. “Could it be something that comes with growing up, like
shaving?”

Rap
would not talk about such things with chatterbox Lin.

“Does
that cast bother you?”

Lin
looked down at his arm. “Yes, some. Why?”

“Because,”
Rap said, “if you start hinting that my mother needed to shave, then you’re
going to have two of them.”

Summer,
said the hardworking folk of Krasnegar, was the two weeks they were given to
prepare for the other fifty. There was no small truth in that.

True,
summer usually lasted longer than two weeks, but it came late and left soon,
and it was marred by endless toil. Without the profit of their summer labors,
the people would not survive the merciless winter that was sure to follow. A
few hardy crops were sown and most years those could be harvested before the
first snows, to augment the grain that must be imported by ship. The other
years were destined to bring famine and sickness before summer came again. Peat
must be cut and dried and carried to the town in load after load, to blunt the
deadly teeth of frost during the long nights. Hay, also, standing high upon the
wagons, crossed the causeway at every tide so that the king’s horses
could eat until spring came again and the cattle might give milk for the
children the next year. Fish must be caught and smoked, livestock slaughtered
and their beef salted; seal meat or whale meat laid by, also, if the boats were
blessed with fortune. Vegetables and berries, rushes and driftwood and furs...
the scanty fruits of the hard land were carefully gathered and jealously
hoarded away.

Here
and there in the bare hills stood forlorn hamlets and clumps of cottages, where
life was even harder than it was in the town. But for most of the year there
was nothing for men to do on the land except survive, and survival was easier
in the city--or death less lonely--and so the cottagers also huddled in with
the townsfolk during the long winters, like badgers in their earth. When the
snows streamed off the hills in spring, they emerged once more to their toil,
and voices were heard again under the sky.

Without
careful management their efforts would never have sufficed, and the leadership
came from the king, or more directly from his factor, a tall and rawboned
jotunn named Foronod, who was everywhere at all times and reputedly wore out
three horses a day. His water-blue eyes saw everything, and he commanded
everyone in sharp, laconic phrases like small knives, never wasting a word or a
moment, never sparing a soul, least of all himself. In high summer he seemed to
sleep even less than the sun. His gangling figure could appear at any time
anywhere in the kingdom, long legs hanging limp at the sides of his pony,
silver hair flashing a warning before him as he came into view. His memory was
as capacious as the palace storerooms. He knew to the inch how much hay had
been gathered, how much peat; he knew the state of the herds and the times of
the tides and he could call down the wrath of the Gods or the Powers on anyone
caught slacking or sleeping except for reasons of total exhaustion. He knew the
strengths and abilities and weaknesses of every man and woman, girl and boy in
his whole great workforce.

Foronod
noted that a wagon had been repaired and returned. He doubtless noted as well
that a certain stableboy had been promoted to driver, and that fact, also,
would have been stored away until it might be needed. But the factor had many
drivers and that boy had talents that others did not.

By
nightfall, Rap was back with the herds.

“Turn
around, my dear,” Aunt Kade said. “Charming! Yes, very nice!
Definitely charming.”

Inos
did not feel charming, she felt wretched. There was a nasty hard feeling at the
back of her throat and a dull coldness all over her. Her arms and legs were
made of stone. Last night she had slept in her own bed for the last time. An
hour ago she had eaten her last meal in the palace-not that she had been able
to eat anything. Every time she did anything at all now it was for the last
time.

And
her slimy mood was not helped by the charmingness of her dress, either. She was
wearing her precious golden dragon silk and she hated it. Somehow she blamed it
for starting all this. Now it had been made up into a gown, and she thought it
looked ludicrous, not charming. She could not believe that ladies in the Impire
wore anything so outlandish. The minstrel must have been fantasizing when he
sketched such absurdities as lace dangling over her hands and shoulders like
small pillows. Trumpets indeed!

And
if the dress was bad, the hat was unthinkable-a smaller trumpet, a high golden
cone all frilly with more lace. She felt like a freak in it, a clown. Every
small boy in Krasnegar was going to laugh himself hysterical at the sight of
her as she rode down to the dock. The sailors would fall off the ship laughing.
Probably the ladies in the Impire would kill themselves. Inos was sure they
would all be wearing bonnets like any sane woman wore.

The
only consolation was that Aunt Kade looked worse. Her conical hat stuck up like
a chimney pot and her dumpy form could never be made to resemble a trumpet. A
drum, maybe, or even a lute, but no trumpet. She had appropriated the
apple-blossom silk, which was all wrong for her shape, although Inos had to
admit that the colors matched her white hair and pink cheeks. Aunt Kade,
moreover, was excited, bubbling with happiness, chattering like a flock of
birds in joyful anticipation.

“Charming!”
Aunt Kade repeated. “Of course we shall have to acquire many more gowns
when we are established at Kinvale, but at least we shall not seem too rustic
when we arrive. And the good citizens of Krasnegar shall see how ladies should
dress these days. I do hope the coachman remembers to go slowly. Hold your head
up, dear. You look like a unicorn when you bend forward. Oh, Inos, you will
love Kinvale! “ She clasped her pudgy hands.